Scientists Identify Asteroids of Interstellar Origin Moving in Our Solar System- Technology News, Firstpost

FP TrendsJuly 21, 2020 4:52:27 PM IST

Scientists from the Geosciences and Exact Sciences Institute of the São Paulo State University (IGCE-UNESP) in Río Claro, Brazil, have recently discovered 19 asteroids of interstellar origin. These asteroids are classified as Centaurs, which are external objects in the Solar System that revolve around the Sun in the region between the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune.

The study entitled An Interstellar Origin for High Inclination Centaurs was supported by FAPESP and has been published in the Monthly notices from the Royal Astronomical Society.

According to the study, when the The Solar System was formed 4.5 billion years ago. In a stellar nursery, he understood his systems of planets and asteroids. Some beginnings were close enough to each other to facilitate strong gravitational interactions. Due to these interactions, there was an exchange of material between the systems, he reported.

Representative image. Image courtesy of: NASA / JPL

“Some objects now in the Solar System must, therefore, have formed around other stars. Until recently, however, we were unable to distinguish between captured interstellar objects and objects that formed around the Sun. The first identification was made by us in 2018, “said Maria Helena Moreira Morais, one of the two co-authors.

The first space rock that scientists discovered was asteroid 514107 Ka’epaoka’awela. The asteroid’s name is Hawaiian and loosely translated as “mischievous companion of Jupiter moving in the opposite direction.”

The study reveals that centaurs have highly inclined orbits with respect to the planets’ orbital plane. He also disclosed that the rocks and space planets that emerged in the Solar System were produced from a thin disk of gas and dust that orbited the sun.

According to the researchers, the celestial bodies and objects that formed in the solar system moved in the plane of the disk 4.5 billion years ago. If this were the case, it should also have been true for centaurs.

“However, our simulation showed that 4.5 billion years ago, these objects rotated around the Sun in orbits perpendicular to the plane of the disk. In addition, they did so in a region distant from the gravitational effects of the original disk,” said Morais.